


in the morning

by insomniacjams



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:43:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insomniacjams/pseuds/insomniacjams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>getting up at five to bake cookies and wrap presents on Christmas morning isn't the stupidest thing he's ever done in his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the morning

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd kind of fluffy stuff. Christmas fic, because I needed something to take my mind off the frantic holiday season right now. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Joe is a grown man, which means he can drink his coffee with Baileys at five in the morning. He reminds himself why he's awake; he's a grown man, which means getting up at five to bake cookies and wrap presents on Christmas morning isn't the stupidest thing he's ever done in his life.

He pulls up a recipe for gingerbread on his iPad; he'd prepared the dough the night before, but he references the baking instructions and the cookies come quickly. He frosts the gingerbread men with Christmas colours, dropping M&M's on for decoration.

After, he can't help but start a batch of sugar cookies before he begins to wrap his presents. It was Christmas; most of the important gifts had already been sent away to his friends and family around the globe, and the guys on the team had received their gifts before going their separate ways for the short break.

Really, Joe just has one present to wrap. It sits ominously on his counter top like it has for the past weeks, staring him down. "You're getting old," it tells him. "You're too sentimental. He's just a kid; he's not going to appreciate it." Joe knows he wouldn't have; he didn't appreciate much at 20.

Joe had felt like the worst type of sap putting it together, heavily scouring the internet for every appropriate image he could find of Tomas and the guys, digging through his own files until he found the perfect pictures.

In the end, he couldn't bring himself to build a scrapbook like a middle-aged woman with no appreciation for what 20 year old kids really like, so he'd just collected the photos, printed them and popped them into an album with the Sharks logo on the cover to show that Tomas really is appreciated where he is.

He throws it together in a box with a box of Belgian chocolate and hockey tape. After staring at it for a moment, he gives in and takes the video games he bought out of the closet and adds those to the box too. Joe knows Tomas doesn't need video games, or Belgian chocolate like he needs tape, but he'd been walking through the mall and hadn't been able to stop himself from buying them.

"You're going crazy," he mutters to himself as he shoves tissue paper in the spaces, tapes the box shut and rolls out his red and gold Christmas wrapping. It only takes him another two minutes to wrap the package in a perfunctory fashion, then drop a bow on top.

He leaves it on the counter, because he does't know what to do with it. Joe isn't big on Christmas; he's not religious, and he doesn't think his break is ever long enough to visit his family so he hasn't had a tree in years. He's fine with that, especially considering nobody ever visits anyway.

This year is different though, he thinks, as he plates the sugar cookies with the gingerbread. This year is the first year in many that he's not spending Christmas day alone. This year, he woke up at five AM to bake cookies, because he's not spending Christmas alone. Joe hasn't felt like this in years, and he doesn't know what to make of it.

He lights the fireplace; it was one of the reasons he bought this house, and it's a main feature in his living room, but he so rarely entertains company in the winter that he doesn't often use it. When he tosses in the logs and lets the fire crackle, it feels a lot more like the right season, even though there are no stockings.

Joe drops the cookies on the table, and paces around his house a few times to check if there's anything embarrassing he needs to hide. He knows it's not important as he's doing it, since he doesn't keep anything humiliating in public view (his box of toys is under his bed, and honestly, he doesn't own anything else embarrassing) and Tomas had been in his house many times before.

Joe forces himself to lie on the couch, turn on the TV for some holiday programming, and stop freaking out about nothing. It doesn't work, but he's only tapping his fingers impatiently now instead of pacing, so there's that.

Tomas shows up just past eleven with a colourfully wrapped package with uneven corners only ever seen with inexperience. "I wanted to bring beer," Tomas says, "but you know."

"Yeah," Joe says, hauling him inside with an arm and shutting the door with his other. "I know." He wants to say he has beer, but he doesn't want to contribute to delinquency of minors or whatever the courts call it these days. Then again, he thinks, it's Christmas. "I have beer anyway."

"Cool," Tomas says, and Joe smiles, because it's an automatic reaction around the kid; his laughter's contagious and his smiles light up the room (or maybe just Joe's living room). "So, uh, I'm not really, uh, Christmas celebrating, you know? What do you want to do?"

"I made cookies," Joe says, letting Tomas drop his present on the table.

"You made these?"

"Yeah."

"For me?"

"Yeah," Joe says again. Tomas is smiling so hard he looks like his mouth is going to fall off. 

"Cookies," he grins.

"Yeah," Joe says for the third time.

"They're great," Tomas tells him.

"You haven't eaten one yet."

"You made them. They're great," Tomas assures him. 

"Right, so, I was thinking we could watch A Charlie Brown Christmas for now?" Joe suggests, the movie already queued up on his TV.

"Okay," Tomas agrees easily, like he'd agree to anything Joe would say. He picks up a cookie and hip checks Joe onto his own couch with ease that should worry him.

Joe grabs the remote and hits the play button just as Tomas collapses half on top of him, his feet pressing into the end of the sofa as he tucks his head under Joe's chin. "Right," Joe says, startled by the sudden closeness of rookie in his life.

"Okay?" Tomas asks.

"Yeah," Joe says for the millionth time. It is okay, he's okay, it's Christmas, and Tomas is here, which automatically makes it better than any Christmas has been in a long time. "I got you something," Joe tells him, pointing at the package he'd wrapped earlier.

"It's great. I love it," Tomas says.

"You don't know what it is yet," Joe laughs. "I know you got me a coffee maker, by the way. Niemi told me the other day. Thanks for that."

Tomas rolls his eyes. "I love it because it's from you," he says flatly, like he's unimpressed by Joe's lack of understanding.

"Right," Joe smiles at the kid in his lap. He looks at the bottle of Baileys he'd forgotten out on the coffee table, buries his nose in Tomas' hair.

"What are you doing?" Tomas asks. Joe breathes in his scent, his smile ear-splitting to match Tomas' constant chipper mood. "Are you smelling me?"

"Yeah," Joe says.

Joe is a grown man, which means if he wants to spend his short Christmas break with his favourite rookie laying lazily in his lap while drinking his coffee with Baileys basking in the warmth of his fireplace and watching Christmas movies, well he's 34, which means he's done a lot of dumb things in his life. So this isn't even close to the stupidest thing he's ever done, and 34 is still young, so it won't even be the stupidest thing he'll ever do.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading :)


End file.
